Not long ago my nephew informed me that his son plays in a school-sponsored soccer league where if one team gets too far ahead, the other team isn’t allowed to score any more points. That’s right, you can win, but you can’t hurt anyone’s feelings doing so. I couldn’t help asking myself what kind of world this rule is preparing the little darlings for. A society where everyone is treated fairly? A career that never disappoints? How about four tours of duty in Afghanistan?

Ask teachers what else is wrong with today’s public school system and they’ll tell you what the experts deny. Namely, that every federal Department of Education mandate –from busing to No Child Left Behind – has lowered classroom performance. Further, that the wholesale mainstreaming of students with, um, challenges has teachers spending more time babysitting and less time teaching. Who thought spending more money on things that don’t impact learning and covering less material in class would turn out more competitive kids? Experts in political correctness perhaps. As one teacher I interviewed said, “Don’t you think the slow kids know they’re slow?”

Education in America is a $1 trillion dollar market and lots of folks would like to fix it. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, which recently tested about a half-million young students in 34 countries, now ranks the US 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. Similar surveys yield similar results. We’re behind Slovenia, Estonia and the Slovak Republic. Think your kids can find those on a map?

Don’t search too hard to discover the source of our problem. Take a look at the Maine Sunday Telegram’s classified Education ads from July 22, 2012. That Sunday there were eight display ads from six public school districts and two state colleges. Collectively, they were advertising for 12 regular teaching positions in music, PhysEd, social studies, English, math, Spanish and French. All good stuff. But 16 other jobs were also listed in those ads. Openings for: Special Ed/Clinical Coordinator, Special Ed/Intensive Behavioral Support, K-2 Special Ed, K-5 Special Ed/Resource, Math Intervention Teacher, Clinical Instructor/Communications Sciences & Disorders, English Second Language Teacher, TRiO Retention Advisor, Academic Interventionist/Literacy, Special Ed/Resource, Special Ed/Emotional Disabilities, Special Ed/Life skills, Special Ed/Behavior, plus three Educational Technicians.

What are we running? Institutions of learning, or halfway houses for the misbehaved, over-medicated and pampered? It’s time to stop coddling kids exhibiting personality disorders that didn’t exist when I went to public school. Back then, if you exhibited say, “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD), you might take a little trip to the boys’ locker room with the assistant principal. Your private lesson with him might be occasionally punctuated by the assistant principal tossing you up against the lockers. Experts would be amazed how many cases of ODD were cured back in the good old days when anti-social teenage behavior was met with anti-social adult behavior. (Oh, stop whining. Your dog survived obedience school, didn’t it?)

It’s past time to remind parents that their disruptive child doesn’t have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to disrupt a classroom. It’s time to protect our schools from being sued by every entitled brat with a lawyer on his/her speed dial. And it’s way past time for public school administrators and boards to stop asking how Little Johnny feels and start asking what Little Johnny has learned.

Others are asking. Including Governor LePage who is in favor of bypassing the school system altogether and hiring corporations to teach kids on screen and at home – like 27 other states already do. The money for this will come directly out of public school budgets by the way. Can you hear the bell tolling now?

Parents aren’t voting for vouchers and charter schools for no reason. In too many towns, our public schools have become depositories for the disenfranchised. We could get smart and save billions by closing down the federal Department of Education and rescinding their unfunded mandates. We could go back to teaching kids how to think, not how to pass some test. If nothing else we could stop handing out trophies for ninth place. That doesn’t build self-esteem; it builds losers. Kids who feel fine about finishing 14th, 17th and 25th as long as no one brags about doing better.

Rick Roberts (reroberts46@yahoo.com) is a veteran of Boston’s advertising community and the U.S. Army. He lives in Windham. He is author of two books: I Was Much Happier When Everything I Owned Was In The Back Seat Of My Volkswagen, and the recent novel, Digital Darling. Both are available at bookstores, Amazon.com, or visit: BabyBoomerPress.com.